Welcome back to another newsletter. I hope you're having an absolutely wonderful day. I'm writing this to you from my place at a disclosed location up in the hills.
It's gorgeous.
I'm shirtless, sipping an espresso, soaking in the amazing sun, which just feels absolutely incredible.
Birds chirping.
I just did my meditation and morning body energization exercises, as well as reviewed my vision and my day in the 8AM app and also reorganized some things in there.
I'm a really big fan of the concept of improvement through subtraction.
That is, to make something better by eliminating things rather than adding more components. More is not necessarily more. Often more is less. And as the saying goes, less is more. I've applied that within the 8AM app, which of course, you can check out for $1 at 8amapp.com.
So with that, I invite you to consider in your life: Where do you keep adding more, thinking that it will make it better? Or rather, where are you stuck where you think that more is the answer? Have you ever stopped to contemplate—and maybe you can right now—where in my life, whether it's a certain product or business that you have, or perhaps even a health problem or fitness routine, or in your social life, how can you remove things in order to make them better?
The 80/20 rule states that in any given set of data, 80% of your desired results stem from 20% of inputs.
And so when you eliminate, when you simplify, often what happens is you just get better results all around. Particularly in a business and product building stance, when I look at the 8AM app, I decided to just eliminate all of the courses, meditations and even the community tab because I realized that the most important thing within the 8AM app is the master vision, the weekly map, listening to your master vision, and having an 80/20 clear plan for what you need to do.
That will actually give you a better result.
So again, I invite you to contemplate this in your life and your business and your product lineup, whatever it is that you've got going on…
Now the main topic that I wanted to bring up today is something that's been on my mind a lot over the last year to two years, which is the idea of Jesus Christ in the traditionalist Christian sense versus Jesus Christ in the view of a more mystical perspective—that is—in the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda, Eckhart Tolle, and Michael Singer alike.
Now what I've found is that immediately when I bring up this topic of Christ, the spidey senses start tingling for the traditionalist Christian. They start to get really, really uncomfortable. They then try to group you into a box—either they want you to flat out say "Jesus Christ is God. Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. He died for our sins." They point to Romans 10:9-10 as basically the only set of things you need to do to ensure your place in heaven…
And then they kind of leave it at that. No more critical thinking beyond that. Their brain (and heart) just kind of shuts off, seemingly out of fear imo.
I have found that traditional Christians look at any interpretations of Christ in a more mystical sense—from the likes of an Eckhart Tolle or Paramahansa Yogananda—as New Age demonic perversion… Which I'm here to tell you is so far from the truth.
When Paramahansa Yogananda came to the United States in 1920, he came to unite the world in peace and love, and to show the similarities between the teachings of Christianity—of Jesus Christ, as he called it, "original Christianity"—and the teachings of every major spiritual tradition and religion throughout all time.
From Hinduism and Bhagavan Krishna to Judaism to Islam.
He came to show the underlying truths that each religion contains, and he specifically focused on Jesus because his mission was to come to the United States and bring this message of unification and truth here. That was his mission specifically.
Yogananda is who originally popularized—the term "Christ consciousness" in association with Jesus Christ. This is the term, particularly, that traditionalist Christians get extremely uncomfortable about.
And I'll tell you why.
The reason is because throughout the next several decades, what originally was a relatively accepted term among traditional Christians — “Christ consciousness” —became subverted and stolen and grouped into the hippie movement, which obviously emphasized a lot of LSD, MDMA, drug culture, free sex with anybody you care to have sex with, and kind of open border sexuality and promiscuity and drug use all under the guise of freedom, spirituality, and openness.
And so those two things got grouped in together.
And so sadly, this is where traditional Christians kind of stop.
Like - when I start bringing up Eckhart Tolle, they kind of turn their brains off.
When they hear me bring up Yogananda, they think I'm going to invite them to Burning Man to do an ayahuasca ritual and then some kind of tantra orgy party or whatever. lol.
But please listen.
“Christ consciousness” isn't demonic. Running away from critical thinking is.
Look—Jesus Christ wasn't even his name. It was Yeshua. And "Christ" wasn't his last name—it was a title. He was believed to be the Christ. If we can't even pause to think about that distinction, then we're not protecting our faith. We're just protecting our comfort.
Faith does not mean you cannot think about things critically. In fact, I'd argue the opposite—true faith invites inquiry. It's strong enough to withstand basic questions.
So Yogananda came with a very clear message.
Jesus called himself both the "Son of God" and the "Son of Man." He spoke about the Holy Spirit. He spoke about God the Father. Traditional Christians call this the Holy Trinity—and many pastors and preachers have their ways of explaining it.
But Yogananda, as a minister and monk himself, came with an Eastern perspective on these terms that actually makes them crystal clear. And if you understand them in this way, they have profound implications for how we relate to Christ and God.
Here's what he taught:
First of all, Jesus Christ as the "Son of Man"—when he spoke of himself in that way, he was referring to Jesus, the historical son of man, of Nazareth. The human vessel.
When he spoke of himself as the "Son of God," he was more so leaning into the Spirit, the soul that animated the Son of Man, which is one with God. And that Spirit, the Son of God, is a special and unique spirit and soul in this world, in this universe, that we can all attune ourselves to, and we can all connect to.
It was a very specific Spirit—that which animated the Son of Man, Jesus Christ of Nazareth—with what I believe, and what I believe Yogananda would say, to be the most significant concentration of God energy. In fact, the most significant concentration of God energy to ever animate a human. That's what makes Jesus Christ the historical figure special—he was the vessel for the most potent form of God power and energy to ever walk the planet.
Now of course, really, I can’t prove this to you. No one can really.
The only way to verify this is to go into prayer and meditation, into your heart, and to simply connect to that Spirit and connect to God and the higher power yourself. But it's really quite straightforward.
Now, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit in which we can all tap into and connect to—in essence, connecting to Jesus Christ's Spirit. The Holy Spirit is available for us to connect to within ourselves, within our body temples. The Spirit we can feel underneath the skin, underneath the cells of our body, underneath even the vibratory atoms. The Spirit is the source of all love and peace and our connection to God the Father.
Now God the Father is everything and all that is—the manifested and the unmanifested. He is the Supreme unmanifest and manifest energetic force that encompasses all spirits, all souls, and the entire manifest and unmanifested cosmos.
Here's a clearer, more hard-hitting version:
Now what about the death and resurrection?
Paul gives us a clue in 1 Corinthians 15:31 when he says, "I die daily."
What did he mean by that?
Yogananda explained that for thousands of years, advanced Yogis have practiced meditation techniques that give them complete mastery over their bodies. They can consciously slow their heart rate to near-zero. They can enter states so deep that all vital signs cease. They can leave their body, merge with God, and return at will.
This isn't theory—it's documented. Even today, there are yogis who can be buried alive for days and emerge unharmed. Modern science has studied monks who can control their autonomic nervous system to degrees that seem impossible.
Paul understood this. "I die daily" wasn't metaphor—it was practice.
And so Yogananda describes the crucifixion and resurrection like this: Jesus didn't "die" the way we think of death. He consciously left his body, ascended to God the Father, remained there for three days, and then returned to his body. He demonstrated mastery over death itself.
This is exactly why the Quran came 600 years later.
God saw that people were misinterpreting what happened. The Quran says in Surah 4:157-158 that Jesus wasn't killed or crucified in the way people thought—that "it was made to appear so to them," but that God raised him up.
When Muslims say "Jesus didn't die," they're not denying the crucifixion happened. They're saying his soul never died. His Spirit—the Christ—never ceased to exist. It went up to God.
The body—the Son of Man—suffered on the cross. But that body isn't what we pray to. We pray to the Spirit that animated Jesus. The Holy Spirit. The Christ Spirit. Which is God. This spirit did not suffer. Only the body.
That's what the Quran was clarifying. That's what Muslims are here to tell us.
Now, one last thing I want to bring up here, because Christians will point to where Jesus said in John 14:6, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." And also in John 10:30, "I and the Father are one."
What did he mean by that?
Well, Yogananda made it very clear. "I and the Father are one" - Jesus was speaking often as God the Father through the Jesus Christ Spirit. He was one with the Father, so the Father did speak through Jesus. But obviously, the Father isn't confined to a single point in space and time. The Father can be anywhere and everywhere at once.
When Jesus then said, "No one comes to the Father except through me," what he meant was through the Spirit, through the soul, by going into the body temple and meditating. Practicing meditation which is to connect your soul and spirit to God the father. That is it.
Not by saying a few words and believing in a historical man.
“But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you,” (Matthew 6:6).
So, meditate. That’s literally what Jesus did.
If you have a rebuttal to this, my DMs are always open.
That's my message for today.
I hope you enjoyed.
I'll see you tomorrow.
— Arlin
